And Sing of Sweet Surrender - Part Seven

[saythrice]

 


Time to escape
The clutches of a name
No this is not a game
(It’s just the beginning)

Jess hadn’t actually made it to a hotel the night before, as had been her plan.

She’d stumbled out of the Roadhouse at about three in the morning, book tucked under her arm, and with several more drinks in here than she had planned on after she had mentally cut herself off. Feeling warm and happy and pleasantly numbed, she had stumbled to her stolen car, dropped herself in the front seat, and planned thoroughly to find somewhere to sleep. Sleep, she had figured, was very important to have, because around one, Ellen had actually given her a job. Handed her a newspaper article she’d printed off the internet, explained what the weird weather patterns and animal deaths they were talking about probably meant, and suggested that it might be a good way to test her knowledge.

Ellen had suggested that Jess bring back up, but at the moment, as raw as she was feeling over the whole Meg betrayal, she hadn’t really wanted to find back up in that bar full of drunk hunters.

So she’d gone to her car, planned to find someplace to sleep, and when she woke some five hours later, it was to her face smushed against the lines in the front bench seat. She had fallen asleep in the car, just sort of toppled sideways like a redwood, and passed out with her face crunched unattractively against the cheap vinyl.

“Nnngh,” Jess groaned, running her hand through her hair, which had apparently decided to tie itself into knots in the night and stick up in every direction, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Food was clearly the first order of business. No, a bathroom was the first order. Food could come second.

Connecting the exposed wires in the steering column, Jess pulled out of the gravel parking lot, flicking the visor down so that the early morning sunlight didn’t shine directly in her hung over eyes.

It took her half an hour to find a café on the dusty, quiet roads, and took the book inside with her when she headed into the place. Between the heavy weight of the book resting on her hip, the heavy warmth of the gun at her lower back, and the heavy knife under her pants leg, she felt better. A lot better. Like she was safe.

It wasn’t until she had used their washroom, eaten her breakfast, struggled through a chapter of the book (which was written in Olde English - readable, but only if you really devoted a lot of time, effort, and remembered that what looked like a funky ‘s’ was actually an ‘f’), and headed out onto the road for about an hour that Jess realized that something was very wrong. She’d felt odd for the last half hour of her trip, or so, as if someone was watching her, looking for her weaknesses and her vulnerabilities, and it was really starting to freak her out.

On one of those long stretches of empty highway that the prairies were famous for, Jess tried to find out what was bothering her. Which included, among checking other things, glancing over the back of the bench seat into the back seat.

Which was when she howled in shock, and jerked the car off the road, nearly sending it into a ditch.

“What the hell?!” she roared, spinning to face the back seat, jerking her gun out of her jeans.

“What is wrong with you?!” Jo bellowed back, hands up. “Shit! Learn to drive!”

“You’re in my fucking back seat!” she yelled, gun still pointing at the other’s forehead. “What the hell are you doing in my fucking back seat?!”

“I was sleeping!” she hollered.

“Why were you there not what were you literally fucking doing?! I don’t care what you were literally fucking doing, I wanted to know what the fuck you were doing in my goddamn back seat!”

“It’s not your damn car anyway, you fucking stole it!”

“Possession is nine tenths of the law, now tell me what the hell you are doing before I start fucking shooting!”

Jo bolted forward at that, small fingers wrapping around the barrel of the gun as she tried to force it out of Jess’ hands. Of course, Jess had no such plans for allowing her to do that, so she struggled back just as hard, until with a sharp retort, the gun went off, blowing a whole straight through the rust bucket of a car’s roof.

Both women recoiled in pain, and Jess curled her hands over her ears, trying to make the ringing - and the dizzy reeling feeling that accompanied it - stop. “For fuck’s sake!”

“Goddamn it,” Jo groaned, not that either could actually hear what the other was saying over the ringing.

Jess waited until the whole world stopped showing up in reeling, spinning doubles, then pointed the gun back at Jo. “All right, this time, I will actually fucking shoot you. What the hell are you doing here?”

“Don’t shoot me,” she groaned, wincing when she spoke. “I just wanted to help you.”

“Help me.”

“Yeah… you have that demon job in Boise… I was just gonna come help.”

“Your mother says she doesn’t want you hunting,” Jess considered her, narrowing her eyes.

“Yeah, and she’s somehow managed to forget that I am not only legal, but trained to fucking hunt.” Jo glowered right back at her. “My decision to make, now, not hers. So are you gonna let me come as your backup, or do I have to find my own way out of here?”

Jess watched her with a level gaze for a moment, then said, “Christo.”

“Well, nice to see you’re at least reading the lore.” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’m not a demon. I’m just a really pissed off woman with a headache and the desire to rain terror down on some unnatural supernatural sons of bitches.”

“…all right.” Jess flicked the safety back onto her gun, then shifted to tuck it back into her belt.

“…you seriously keep your gun in your ass?” Jo blinked at her. “You know how dangerous that is?”

“Do I look like I care?” she grunted.

“No, not really, but if you like your ass being, you know, not accidentally shot off, I’d recommend invest in a good holster.”

“And where do you carry yours?” she arched a single brow.

“I use rifles,” Jo drawled, as though that was the most obvious thing in the world. “Now that you actually know that I’m here, can I come sit in the front? The back is really small, my legs are completely locked up.”

“Yeah,” Jess nodded, and made sure the car was actually running properly. She’d kind of tossed the emergency brake on when they’d pulled over, instead of taking it out of drive, and there was the distinct scent of burnt rubber and scorched oil in the air now.

“You killed the car,” Jo informed her as she slid into the front passenger seat.

“I noticed. But as you said, it’s not my car,” she shifted the e-brake off, and headed back onto the dusty road, carefully. “You ain’t morally objecting to the idea of me picking up another one in the next town we come to, are you?”

“Hell no,” Jo drawled, considering her nails. She didn’t seem the type of girl to care about things like broken or dirty nails, to Jess, so she figured the other was mostly just trying - and failing - to act nonchalant. “In fact, I’ll help you find something better. Break in instead of just having to leave the doors open all the time… way too easy for random people to just slide into your back seat.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” she growled.

“…you’re not going to grump at me the whole way, are you?” Jo glanced over at her, frowning as she shifted so that her knees were resting against the dashboard. “Because we do have to work together on this. Watch each other’s back.”

“Did you not hear me tell your mother what happened to the last person I hunted with?” Jess asked, frowning.

“No.” she hesitated. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“She turned out to be a demon. Had been a demon the whole time.”

“Shit.” Jo blinked. “….no wonder you’re looking for ways to recognize demons. You’ve had to actually face it. She do anything to you?”

A few thoughts flitted through Jess’ head - Meg thwapping her with a pillow, Meg offering her alcohol, Meg pressed into her back as she taught her to shoot, the spark in Meg’s eyes as she sent Jess into the throes of ecstasy, Meg refusing to kiss her, the black eyes as Meg slammed her back against the wall. “…nothing major.” She said, instead. “I was lucky. Happened to be exorcising someone else at the time. Exposed her.”

“Shit.” She said again, leaning back and staring up at the ceiling for a moment. “Damn.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, shifting slightly in her seat. “….so what are you doing here, anyway? Why’d you camp out in my car and decide to escape home by coming with me?”

“Because you looked like you could need the help of a hunter who actually knew what they were doing.”

Jess snorted, glancing over at her. “Bullshit.”

Jo smirked slightly, stretching. “And you weren’t a middle aged, dirty, drunk-ass pervert man.”

She hesitated. “True.”

It was a little eerie having her own thoughts echoed by her trespasser. “Right. So… you know more about demons and shit than I do, right? Strange animal deaths and weird weather patterns - those really signs of demons?”

“Not always,” Jo frowned slightly, considering that. “But electrical storms and widespread cow death with no reason? Definitely.”

“Damn.” She frowned. “So we need to know more about demons, I guess.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, glancing at her. “…want me to read to you out of the book?”

“You can read old English?”

“Not exactly,” Jo considered that. “I’m not really an old English kinda person. But I can figure it out enough to figure out what’s going on.”

“All right then. Read on,” Jess nodded.

----

Compared to some I've been around
But I really tried so hard
That echo chorus lied to me with its
"Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on"

“Remind me to never steal another bucket of shit just because I think no one will notice if I do,” Jess muttered, stepping into the little motel room, wanting to wring out her hair. It frizzed and curled when it got wet like this.

“Agreed,” Jo muttered, dropping their bags on the floor just inside the door, then hesitated. “Woah. Underwater themed hotel?”

“Weird,” she muttered, finally wringing out her hair.

It had started storming about three hours after Jo had started reading to her, about an hour before they finally got to Boise. Though they didn’t think anything about it at the time, it took about five minutes before they realized that water was starting to pour in through the bullet hole in the ceiling, and they scrambled to move their bags - with all the weapons and ammunition away from the hole. For the next hour, they had the rain actually rain down on them through the ceiling, and by the time they got to the little motel they’d finally gotten a room in, they were soaked to the bone.

“A little ironic,” Jo smirked, and flicked the light on, laughing. “It’s a mermaid’s belly button.”

She snickered, and shed her soaked jacket, looking around. It was an almost terrifying place, but in a cool way. The light was blueish tinted, shining through a warped glass shade, and there were corals and shells everywhere. Pressing her hand down on the bed, Jess glanced at Meg. “I can’t believe we actually managed to get this room as cheap as we did. They’re water beds.”

“Water beds?” the other darted over, and threw herself down on one, giggling maniacally. “This is awesome! I’ve never been on a water bed before!”

Jess smirked down at her. “You like, huh?”

“Heh… it’s fun. Feel like I’m on a boat.” Jo grinned, the mattress bobbing softly under her.

“You know those things are murder on your back, right?” she smirked, bending over to press down on the bed, over and over, making the whole bed rock under Jo, who cackled in glee as she did.

“It’s just one night, I don’t care!” she laughed.

Snickering, Jess shook her head, and headed to the bathroom to check out the facilities, then called, “So the book said we should ward every place we plan to sleep - does that include hotel rooms?”

“Yeah,” Jo rolled off the bed, following her to peer in the bathroom. “Nice tub.”

“Mmmhmm,” she nodded, and headed to dig in her bag. “Salt, right?”

“Salt.” She agreed.

Tugging out one of the several cardboard boxes she’d gotten of pickling salt - it was slightly cheaper than kosher salt, and there had been no table salt at the convenience store she’d picked it up from - she shook the box, nose crinkling. “Our bags did get wet. It sounds kinda chunky.”

“Hell, so long as it's still salt and we can pour it out a little, then we’re good,” she shrugged.

“Good,” Jess nodded, and crouched behind the locked front door to carefully pour it out. It was chunky, with little hard nuggets of salt in it, but she was able to spread it in a fairly neat unbroken line. She did the windows next, then shoved what little was left in her bag. “So what now?”

“That’s enough,” Jo shrugged. She was sitting on one of the two beds, back against the coral encrusted headboard, the Daemonology text resting on her knees. “Wanna work on the book again?”

“I guess. I was gonna do some research on what exactly we’re hunting this time, but…”

“Demons,” she answered, tossing her wet hair over her shoulder, flicking through the pages of the book. They had wrapped it up in a plastic bag once the water started to pour in the ceiling, so it was fortunately still in perfect condition. “At least one, possibly more. What I’d look into is odd things that people are doing. That’ll tell us what we’re looking at. I could still read to you while you look…?”

“Sure, why not?” she sighed, tugging her laptop out of the plastic bag they’d wrapped it in, and settled at the little table at the end of the beds, booting it up.

Two hours later, they had figured out a connection between three recent murders - a massage parlour in a little business area, where one of the employees and two of the customers had been last seen before they disappeared - and had made it through another two chapters of the book. Jess shoved her computer away, yawning, and grumbled, “My eyes are going all blurry funny.”

“Heh. Yeah? Me too. The print in this book is tiny.”

“Mmm, yeah.” She rose, and headed to the other bed, flicking off the mermaid’s belly button as she went, so the only light was from the small lamp on the table between the beds - the shade a taxidermied puffer fish. It was fucking creepy, but kind of impressive. In a completely creepy way.

“Bed time, heh?” Jo smirked, closing the book and setting it with reverence on the table.

“Yeah,” she yawned, cracking her jaw, considering the other woman. “You cool sleeping in the same room and everything?”

“Mmm? Yeah, s’okay.” She shrugged.

Jess considered her for a moment, then shrugged, and slid under the blankets before struggling out of her jeans under the blanket, tossing them towards the end of the bed once she had flopped back into the pillows. “All right, well… g’night, then.”

“Yeah.” Jo nodded, watching her for a moment, then murmured, “Thanks for lettin’ me come, Jess.”

She smiled crookedly at her. “We should all have the choice to run off once in our lives.”

“Yeah,” she said again, smiling softly.

“So tomorrow morning… we head out to a massage parlour,” she yawned again, smirking slightly.

“We going as clients, or applying to fill the missing girl’s job?” Jo grinned.

“You go to work,” she murmured, already starting to fall into sleep. “I look more like the type that would go to a massage parlour, I suppose,” she murmured sleepily, eyes falling shut.

“Naw, you ain’t a skeezy pervert.”

Jess snorted.

----

Imagine there’s no heaven
It isn’t hard if you try

Jess had once described Hell as a cave. That was not entirely accurate.

Hell was a pit.

A gaping hungry hollow at the centre of all that is, ever was, or ever will be, like a cavity in the core of all existence. Hell was a maw like emptiness at the root of everything. The words needed to explain the depth of the darkness there have not yet been written. Hell was not just an absence of light. It was the darkness that existed to crush the light.

The rumours of Hell being a place of fire were greatly exaggerated. Fire would have given those in Hell light.

There was no light in Hell.

Cold metal pressing against her back, Jess was not quite lying down, and not quite standing up, but at an angle somewhere in between, held in place by metal straps as burning cold as the table at her back was, and chains that dug too deep into her skin, leaving her fingers and toes cold and tingling. The taste of metal and the iron of blood seemed seared into her tongue, and it was only when she squeezed her eyes tightly enough to make nerves spark that there was light.

But she could see.

Jess knew the biophysics of this, intellectually. She knew that without light, the human eye cannot see. But she could. She could see the twisted demon that leaned over her as he stripped the skin from her flesh.

She screamed sometimes. When there wasn’t a metal bit in her mouth gagging her, she sometimes let the anxious monster in her gut burst from her lungs like she was wailing for the death of the earth itself, but usually she just chewed at her tongue until it bled, instead. Twice she’d actually bitten her tongue in half.

He liked it when she screamed.

“Livers are interesting,” he was saying, as he cut through her last layer of flesh, opening her stomach cavity. “They always come back exactly as they were when the person died. You can see every section destroyed by alcohol, disease. Healthy ones come out nice and purple.”

Jess arched as he dug about in her innards, biting down on her tongue. Blood flooded down her throat, and she briefly wished she could drown in it, though that would be, of course, redundant.

There was a soft, sickening squelch, and he held her liver up for her to see, still dripping. “You see? Smooth and purple. A nice healthy liver.”

She gagged on her own blood.

He chuckled, and said cheerfully, “What, you find the sight of your own liver distasteful? You, my dear, have only seen it for a few weeks. Trying being strapped to a rock for two thousand years with a giant eagle eating it every day, and then we’ll talk.”

“Fuck you,” she croaked through the blood, words slurred. Guess she’d already bitten off a good chunk of her tongue today.

“All in good time, my dear. Now,” he licked his lips, almost obscene. “Let’s crack that rib cage open and take a look, shall we?”

She spit, blood splattering on his face.

He didn’t react, except to snap her sternum with a quick sharp jerk, splaying her rib cage open.

Jess screamed then, a gut wrenching howl of pain.

One thing that must be understood about Hell is that it is not a hot place, by nature, yet the very air is almost shimmering boiling from heat. This was not due to those alleged fires or from a hot climate, but rather from the sheer crushing population. Though Hell is, like heaven, theoretically infinite, it acts as though there is a constant population overload crisis, crushing so many people in such a small space that it is constantly so hot one might wish to take off their own skin to escape it.

Jess had become used to this heat, though it always seemed hotter than the moment before.

In that moment, though, she was suddenly flooded by a cool sensation, rushing over her like a wave from the sea. Her heat seared eyes opened to see light for the first time since she’d been consumed by fire, and she leaned into the cool touch on her cheek as the cool water rater in rivulets down her steaming skin.

“Wake up”, the voice, so sweet compared to the oily hissing voice of her torturer, ordered. “Wake up, Jess. Now.”

Jess’ eyes snapped open.

The blue tinted ceiling light was on, creating a cool blue glow around the golden woman crouching over her. She looked like a glowing gleaming angel of cool water. Like she was her savior.

“Jo.” She whispered, awed.

“Wake up,” she said again, firmly, and splashed water in Jess’ face again.

“I’m awake!” Jess yelped, struggling to sit up, jerked into full awakeness. “What the hell?!”

The first thing she realized when she was finally sitting up was that she was absolutely soaked. Jo had apparently opted to throw a lot of water on her until she finally woke. The second thing she noticed was that her skin was smoking. The water sizzled where it touched her, as though dropped into a hot frying pan, and steamed.

“What happened?” she demanded, confused.

“You started screaming, so I tried to wake you up.” Jo shrugged, still straddling Jess’ legs. “So when that didn’t work, I tried Holy Water. Thought it might have been an incubus, or a night hag. Or a lamia, I guess.”

“What it?” she panted, trembling, trying to forget what she had dreamed. It was impossible, because it wasn’t just a nightmare. It was also a memory.

“No,” Jo swung herself off of Jess’ lap, sitting on the edge of the water bed. “It’s like some thing you carried with you. Not a demon or anything, you’re not possessed, but it’s like… like an unholy hitchhiker, and it sort of follows you to torture you.”

A shudder ran down Jess’ spine at the other’s word choice, and she visibly winced.

They sat in silence for a moment, then Jess murmured, “So it’s just… what, nightmares?”

“Demon induced night terrors, actually, but close enough.”

She shuddered again.

“You okay, Jess?” Jo frowned, concerned.

“I - no. But I just gotta deal with that, I guess. Cause whining about it isn’t going to make anything better, is it?”

“No,” Jo admitted. “It probably won’t.”

“Of course,” she joked lamely, “Now my bed’s soaking wet, and if I just try to go back to sleep, I’m gonna dream about peeing in it, so maybe I ought to get up and try to research or something, instead.”

Jo snorted, then headed back to her own bed, tugging the blankets back. “C’mon. I’ll share.”

“…you sure?” she hesitated, mind instantly - and unwillingly - being pulled to Meg suggesting the very same arrangement. The last thing she wanted to do was mentally connect this younger but much more capable hunter to that demon that had all but tricked her into her bed. “I’m sure there’s some coffee place open this time of night…”

“After that nightmare, the last thing you need is caffeine. You need sleep. C’mon. Bed.”

She nodded, slowly, and climbed out of her own bed, shivering. The water Jo had splashed her with had pooled on the bed, but she was now completely dry, as though all of the water had evaporated off her skin and clothes. “I’m dry.”

“So grab a drink,” Jo rolled her eyes, patting the bed. “C’mon.”

“No, I mean… you soaked me with that holy water. Now I’m dry.”

Jo sat up, frowning, and shifted to the edge of the bed, reaching up to touch Jess’ stomach, considering the dry tank top. “…that is weird. That is really weird. Does that normally happen?”

“Uh. No. Never. This has never happened to me before.”

“Only with holy water?”

“I… I guess so,” she frowned, considering that, then picked up the little plastic bottle of Holy Water that the other woman had been splashing with before, and spilled some into her palm. It steamed and sizzled for a few moments, slowly evaporating. “…holy shit.”

“That may very well be one of the most disturbingly awesome things I’ve ever seen.” Jo blinked.

“….is it bad?”

“Well… that depends. Did it hurt?” she looked up at Jess with furrowed brows.

“Nope. Not at all. It just feels kinda cold.”

“…cold.”

“Mmmhmm,” she nodded, looking up to meet the other’s eyes. “Weird, I guess, cause it really looks like its boiling in my hand, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it really does.” Jo pondered that. “Well, I can research it, but…”

“No.” Jess said quickly, making the other’s eyes flick back to her. “I mean… don’t worry about it.”

“You sure?”

Having the other woman discover that - likely - the reason holy water boiled cold on her skin was because she had been to hell and back? Oh yeah, she was very sure. “Yeah. It doesn’t hurt, right, so what does it matter?”

“Well, it could become a bigger issue later…”

“And if it does, we’ll know.” She said quickly, flushed. “We’re good.”

“Well, if we’re good, then why the hell ain’tcha getting in bed, then?” Jo arched a single brow, and lay back down, bouncing slightly on the buoyant mattress. “Cause I’m tired and I know you are too, after that workout, so get in the damn bed.”

“Yes ma’am,” Jess drawled, crawling into the bed.

“If you’re gonna give me kinky nicknames,” the other smirked, rolling onto her side, her back to Jess as she reached, stretched to flick the mermaid lamp off. “You really ought to come up with something more creative.”

“Mistress, then, how’s that?” Jess lay on her back, closing her eyes as the room fell into darkness. The blue of the dreamed searing light still burned against the back of her lids.

“Dull. But at least it’s better than ma’am,” she snickered.

“I’ll remember that,” Jess smirked. “Sleep well, Jo.”

“Do my best,” she murmured.

Part Eight
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